As I pondered Enid jumping from the eighties to the nineties, I suddenly had an idea. “I’ve been researching Comstock in the 1880s, but maybe I should skip forward. He scored a major political victory for his cause in 1893, at the World’s Fair in Chicago. My guess is our Comstockers had something to do with it. I think if I could edit that moment it might turn the tide.” I didn’t mention that there was another advantage to being in the nineteenth century. Record-keeping at the Flin Flon Machine was terrible until the 1920s. It would be easy to sneak from 1893 up to 1992 again, where I had already left a paper trail proving I was observing the music of temporal locals. With a little subterfuge, I still had a chance to prevent the next murder. Or maybe the next after that.
Anita nodded and made a note. “Our current grant will cover several more trips back to the late nineteenth, so that’s a good idea. Anyone else?”
“I’m researching Ordovician ocean sediments and the origin of the Machine at Raqmu,” C.L. piped up. “Can this grant cover my expenses in Jordan? Raqmu is right by the airport there.”
I was dubious until C.L. explained a few odd properties of the Machine at Raqmu. It was the first described in recorded history, found by ancient Nabataeans in a city they carved into the sandstone walls of a valley in Jordan. C.L. had read some papers about new evidence showing the Raqmu Machine could affect the other Machines’ behavior. If a group of crazy extremists wanted to lock the timeline, they would probably focus their sabotage efforts on Raqmu.
“All right, C.L., why don’t you work up a protocol that will allow us to check for people tinkering with the Machine.” Anita made another note.
The meeting wound down after that, and we all promised to report back when we had new information.
I gave Enid a long hug before she left. “I’m so sorry.”
“I miss her, even though I don’t know her.” Her face reminded me of shattered safety glass, utterly broken but still somehow holding its shape.
“You’re going to fix this. I know you will.”
Enid cocked her head, and ran a hand over the freshly shaved hairs on the back of her neck. “I know you will too. Safe travels.” That simple pleasantry suddenly felt like a powerful talisman.
“Safe travels,” I replied.
My anxiety hardened into a new sense of purpose. After years of work in the 1880s, I’d changed nothing. But now, at last, I had hope.
FOUR
BETH
Irvine, Alta California (1992 C.E.)
For over a week, we’d been referring to it as “the thing that happened.” We acted normal, following our usual routine, taking advantage of open campus at lunch. Kids could leave school grounds at noon, as long as they came back for fifth period. But it was Friday, so fuck fifth period. Lizzy, Heather, Soojin, and I went to the mall down the street from Irvine High, stopping in at the pizza place, not even bothering to pretend we weren’t ditching class.
“Wanna go to Peer Records?” Soojin didn’t need to ask. We always went there after pizza, following an unblemished sidewalk that divided the parking lot from a monumental Ralph’s supermarket. A nondescript storefront in a jumbled row of shops, Peer Records was our gateway to the world beyond aerobics studios and lawn furniture. Long and narrow, its walls were plastered with posters, T-shirts, and bumper stickers. Rows of record bins turned the tiny space into a maze. When I bent down to check out the overflow boxes on the floor, hunting first for an Alley Cats album, then X-Ray Spex, I blocked the entire aisle.
Heather kicked me lightly with her taped-up boot. “Get out of the way, girlie. I want to check out what they have by The Selecter.”
“I love their song ‘Murder.’” I bit my tongue way too late. Now Soojin and Lizzy were giving me the bug eye. I hadn’t meant it that way. But maybe I had.
“Have you guys heard anything about…” Heather trailed off awkwardly.
“Nope.”
“No.”
“Maybe we should take a walk.” Lizzy tilted her head at the door.
We wandered in silence until we found one of those ornamental lozenges of grass between housing tracts that the Irvine Company called “greenbelt.” We were sitting next to a large intersection, but nobody glanced at us. Just a group of invisible girls on a Friday afternoon.
Lizzy broke the silence. “Do you think anybody found him yet?”
“They must have.” Heather’s cheeks flushed a deep red, her eyes full of outrage and tears.
“Did your parents ask you anything?” I was talking to the group, but looked at Lizzy.
“They thought it was very nice that I volunteered to clean the whole car after somebody, uh, barfed in the back. Luckily all that shit hosed right off.”
None of us really understood Lizzy’s relationship with her parents. They were almost never around, and her brother was already off at college. When I went to her place for sleepovers, her parents would say hi then go back to work on whatever it was they did. Something to do with engineering. They seemed benignly neglectful, which was definitely better than my parents, who demanded to know everything I did in minute detail. Heather’s parents were similarly watchful. Soojin had three loud sisters, so she was able to evade parental surveillance most of the time. None of our parents had said anything about what we did that night. At least, not yet.
“I guess we’ll see something on the news when they find him, right?” Heather sounded almost hopeful.
“Maybe,” Soojin cautioned. “But the police might want to keep it secret if they’re looking for suspects.”
“People will notice that he’s not at school. They’ll have to say something.” As I spoke, I realized how wrong I was. Last year, a guy in eleventh grade had killed himself and the school administration never said anything official about it at all. We only knew about it through rumors from other kids.
Soojin added another barrette to her hair, which did nothing to hold it in place. “I dunno, Beth. We might never know what happened to Scott.”
“I know what happened to him.” Lizzy narrowed her eyes. “He was a fucking asshole who tried to kill Heather and we fucking killed him first.”
We all sat frozen, shocked. Was that really what had happened? The more I thought about it, the more I realized Lizzy was right. It made me feel dizzy and powerful, like a superhero that nobody had a name for yet.
“Yeah, fuck that guy.” Heather ripped a hunk of grass out of the ground, its roots still clotted with soil. Then she threw it as hard as she could into the street. It landed with a sound that nobody heard.
The news finally got out a month later. There was a short blurb in The Orange County Register about a high school boy murdered by “transients, probably from the Los Angeles area.” And then some group of parents, or maybe teachers, decided to turn Scott’s death into a lesson. There was a school assembly in the gym. A cop came to show us a movie about the horrors of “weed and speed.” The school counselor waved around some tattered Just Say No to Drugs paraphernalia left over from the eighties. Then the principal talked about the great tragedy of a promising young man’s life cut short, and how drug use is a cry for help, and we should all report our friends if they were using drugs. Lizzy nudged me and rolled her eyes.
I could see some of Scott’s friends off in the corner of the bleachers. They were uncharacteristically silent, their backs stiff. I only knew one of them by name—Mark—because a few months ago he tried to carve the word “PUNK” into his narrow, pimply chest with a razor blade during open lunch. We’d driven to the park to feed some ducks, but somehow the trip turned into the boys impressing each other. Mark’s stunt was a sad imitation of something he’d seen in a movie about Sid Vicious, but Scott thought it was awesome. He kept talking about the dirtiness of the razor, and the amazingness of Mark’s stalwart efforts, until Lizzy told him to shut up or she wouldn’t give either of them a ride back to school.